Justin Higuchi via Wikimedia Commons
“In 2023 Phoebe Bridgers is gonna drop her third album & the opening track will be about hooking up in the car while waiting in line to get vaccinated at Dodger Stadium and it’s gonna make me cry,” tweeted then-aspiring singer-songwriter Jensen McRae on Jan 14, 2021.
At the time, she only had four singles released on her Spotify account, a byproduct of her time as a pop music major with a concentration in songwriting at USC Thornton School of Music. Her tweet gained traction, and she wrote the song. The title “Immune” encapsulates the angst of the narrator towards their partner’s inability to catch feelings, or COVID. The song did well and landed her a feature in a Wall Street Journal article about the COVID-19 vaccine’s influence on contemporary music. To date, it is one of her best-performing singles, having increased her monthly listeners on Spotify and Apple Music tenfold from 80,000 to 800,000 and amassing her a cult following of listeners.
Her music is often compared to Phoebe Bridgers, one of her biggest influences. On track three of her sophomore album, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!, “Savannah” sounds hauntingly similar to Bridgers’s music. The opening lyrics “There is an intersection in your college town/ With your name on it, with your name on it” are reminiscent of “Somewhere in Germany but I can’t place it/ Man I hate this part of Texas” from Bridgers’s “I Know the End.”
Both songs are breakup songs that end in blistering heat. Both songs evoke a desolate and destroyed landscape: “Savannah” evokes the burned bridges of Sherman’s March from Atlanta to Savannah which serve as a metaphor between McRae and her partner, while Bridgers paints the end of everything in a cacophony of outlet malls, Government UFOs flying overhead, and a billboard sign reading “THE END IS NEAR.”
Relationships end, as all things do, but McRae uses songwriting to help her move through the ends towards new beginnings.
In an interview with The Line of Best Fit, she said, “I’ve been writing songs forever, and I knew my songs were great, but I didn’t know how to do anything else besides write songs,” Her spotify bio glamorously reads, “An avid journaler, McRae has been breathlessly documenting her existence since she was 18.”
She documents trying to make sense of the world she lives in, what she knows to be true, and what she is still figuring out for herself. She grew up as a black girl in a predominantly white environment, feeling left out and developing an observer identity.
She, the observer, watched mean girls succeed while she pursued her songwriting dreams.
“When you’re put into the observer, outsider position early on, it makes it pretty easy to figure out who you really are and what you really want,” McRae said in a video interview.
“Conformity isn’t a choice. I started to develop this identity of being a narrator and a collector of details about my life, about other people’s lives.”
This sentiment is echoed on the fifth track of I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!, “Let Me Be Wrong.” She, the observer, watched mean girls succeed while she pursued her songwriting dreams.
“They’re all in law school and getting engaged,” she said in a TikTok. “wdym they never got karma for making fun of me and my songs when we were kids?” However, the karmic debt always comes back around, and the words that once hurt her only motivate her now. She continues the verse, “Somеthing twisted in my chest/ Says I’m good but not the bеst/ When I was young, that knocked me out/ But nothing really shakes me now.”
She’s grown since she first started songwriting. She was paid “three sweaty dollars” for her first concert ever in a small venue where the only audience member was her mother, but that concert landed her a deal with her first label. She moved up the ladder and opened for MUNA’s North American Tour in 2022. The indie girl group comprised fellow USC graduates Katie Gavin ’15, Josette Maskin ’16, and Naomi McPherson ’15, who took McRae under their wing and brought her out to open for them, as well as to sing “Silk Chiffon” on tour with them; McRae sang Bridgers’s verse in the song.
“MUNA Tour, one of the best experiences of my LIFE,” she tweeted.
Her album is not just the sound of those who came before her. It’s the journey of a singer-songwriter finding her own sound amongst the chaos of breakups and boy troubles.
A year later, Jensen DM’d Noah Kahn on Instagram, which led to her opening for him on his Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever) Tour. Her song “Massachusetts” always garnered the most reaction, saving it for the end of her set. It is one of Kahan’s Favorite songs of hers, and he has even come out to sing it with her on stage on special occasions.
“As an opener, having that reaction to a song that’s not out is very jarring and very humbling and very, very moving. It always brought me to the brink of tears,” said McRae.
Opening for Noah Kahan and MUNA was just the beginning for Jensen McRae. She will be on tour this summer for her new album, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!
Watch out for Jensen McRae this summer; she’s more than just a voice played on WXPN and NPR. She is new music with an ever-growing fan base. Her album is not just the sound of those who came before her. It’s the journey of a singer-songwriter finding her own sound amongst the chaos of breakups and boy troubles. In her words: “This is exactly how this was supposed to sound. I’m still so proud of [the] album and I’m so excited to keep discovering more about what it means to sound like me.”
